They
can’t sell us on the academics anymore. Homeschooled kids run rings
around the public-schooled in every standardized test available.

Until
recently, the best defense of public education was, “It’s
free.” People are beginning to realize this is a lie: it’s
paid for by your ever-increasing taxes. And it’s all about teachers’
unions devouring our money—making fabulous salaries, with benefits
the rest of us can’t even dream of, and retiring at 55 on lavish
pensions. Yes, people have been getting wise to this.

So the
defenders of public education fall back on their last redoubt—“socialization.”

Supposedly,
schooling your kids at home will make them feral—rather like locking
them up in a chicken coop until they’re 21. Sending them to a Christian
school isn’t much better: they won’t be exposed to the enlightened
teachings of the teachers’ unions. What a handicap!

“Socialization”
is the process of learning how to live with other human beings. According
to the National Education Assn. et al, this process can only occur in
a public school classroom. The fact that public school classrooms did
not exist in human history until the middle of the 19th century only goes
to show that people weren’t socialized till then.

As the
teachers’ unions see it, the only way a human being can be properly
socialized is by being confined to a room, or a series of rooms, with
no society but that of other children exactly his own age—no younger,
no older—under the direction of a union-certified teacher. This
is to continue throughout one’s entire childhood, starting with
day care and pre-school and going right on up to college, with no time
off for good behavior. Incarcerated felons get a better break.

In this
scheme of socialization, every child in the classroom is to do the same
thing at the same time. When one bell rings, they start. When another
bell rings, they stop. And if this makes you antsy, the school nurse gives
you Ritalin.

Early
on, your age-group peers will become the most important people in your
life: what with Facebook and cell phones, and both parents working, now
more than ever. Your peers will teach you what is cool and what is not.
They’ll teach you who is cool and who is not—and heaven help
you if you’re not! By this method, every child is educated socially
by the vast experience and wisdom of the other children.

Sounds
pretty normal so far, doesn’t it?

We mustn’t
forget the role of the teacher. It’s the classroom teacher who will
preach to the children, day in and day out, about “gay families”
(whatever they are), how to choose your gender, the falsity of the Christian
religion, and the despicable influence of America on world affairs. It
is the teacher, backed up by the school administration, who will keep
the children on the reservation, either through some senseless and draconian
“zero-tolerance” policy, or some gentler method like mockery
or detention.

More
than anything else, the great lesson taught by public education is conformity.
How could it be otherwise? If you’re ten years old, no teenager
cares what you think, nor will any six-year-old be interested. But no
one is as tyrannical as a group of children of the same age. As a group,
the other ten-year-olds will insist on your conformity. Very few children
get away with being any kind of oddball.

Publicly-schooled
children are intolerant of differences; if you’ve ever been one,
you know it’s true. The impulse to conform is programmed into them
at an early age by “education” experts who’ve had 100
years of practice.

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Why
the passion for conformity? Well, according to the teachers’ unions
and the teachers’ colleges—if you don’t believe me,
look it up—classroom teachers are to be “change agents.”
Their function is to convince children that everything believed in by
their parents and their pastors is stupid, hateful, and wrong. Their mission
is to transform America—into what, the Devil only knows—by
brainwashing whole generations of children. This mission really can’t
be carried out unless the children are first programmed for conformity.

Unionized
public school teachers have been getting better and better at this all
the time. Visit the union websites and see for yourself what they’re
up to.

Are
your children being socialized by public school? If so, you really ought
to reconsider your position.

Lee Duigon,
a contributing editor with the Chalcedon Foundation, is a former newspaper
reporter and editor, small businessman, teacher, and horror novelist.
He has been married to his wife, Patricia, for 34 years. See his new
fantasy/adventure novels, Bell Mountain and The Cellar Beneath the Cellar,
available on www.amazon.com

In this scheme of
socialization, every child in the classroom is to do the same thing at
the same time. When one bell rings, they start. When another bell rings,
they stop. And if this makes you antsy, the school nurse gives you Ritalin.